Night Similarities And Differences Essay

Haylee Fredregill

Mrs. Kraus

College Literature

1 May 2023

The Horror of 1945 “The opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference. The opposite of art is not ugliness, it’s indifference. The opposite of faith is not hearsay, it is indifference. And the opposite of life is not death, it’s indifference.” Said by Elie Wiesel, the author of Night the Nobel Peace Prize winning novel. In the novel, Wiesel and his family are separated after arriving at Auschwitz, Wiesel and his father together and then his mother and younger sister together. The mother and younger sister ended up being killed and it was just Wiesel and his father left. Wiesel gave his story and described how he ultimately survived the Holocaust and undescribable antisemitism through

The choice was to lie about the ages of Elie and his father. If they told the camp that they were younger they were less likely to go straight to the gas chambers for being old and weak or old enough to be forced to do extremely hard labor. Elie was only fourteen when he entered the camp and his father was fifty. They were told by an inmate to lie about their ages so they told the guards that they were eighteen and forty years old. The inmate, Elie, and his father says “”Fifteen.’ ‘No. You’re eighteen.’ ‘But I’m not,’ I said. ‘I’m fifteen.’ ‘Fool. Listen to what I say.’ Then he asked my father, who answered; ‘I’m fifty.’ ‘No.’ The man now sounded angry. ‘Not fifty. You’re forty. Do you hear? Eighteen and forty’”(30). This choice was important because if Elie and his father didn’t lie about their ages, they would have been taken to the cremators and gas chambers and be faced with death

This choice was difficult for Elie and his father because everyday they spent at the camp could be getting closer to death by the gas chambers. They wanted to stay alive but if they had stayed at the camp, they risked being killed in just the day left that they had before the Russians would come. Elie and his father have a conversation about what will be decided, “Well, father, what do we do?’ He was silent. ‘Let’s be evacuated with the others,’ I said. He didn’t answer. He was looking at my foot. ‘You think you’ll be able to walk?’ ‘Yes, I think so.’ ‘Let’s hope we won’t regret it, Eliezer’”(82). Ultimately their choice was to leave with some of the other prisoners and risked not being rescued by the Russians to try and expand their time of survival. The choice to leave with the others ended up being a wrong choice for Elie and his father as they were caught and brought to another camp by the Germans. Schlomo had then gotten ill and been beaten to death, his last words being his son’s